Second page continues to set things up for us. We learn important things presented to us in Roomies! that we’d need to know going into It’s Walky! — Beef is Walky’s twin brother. Walky works at SEMME as lab help. He likes to stare at Joyce while she’s sleeping. Hrm.

Anyway. These two pages don’t correspond to the first few original strips at all. In fact, those original first five strips or so don’t correspond to any of the newer pages. They also don’t contradict them, so I’ll probably run them between today and the next “revised” page. They haven’t been on the Internet for nearly a decade, so they’ll be new to most of you!

Er, replace “contradicted” with “retconned”. The final revision didn’t really contradict previous statements so much as explained the contradiction of the two previous versions and make them both correct.

So, this bugs me, why didn’t Walky perform well in athletic things? He’s got all those nifty powers and, unlike everyone else, they’re natural due to his mother’s genetics so he shouldn’t be able to surpress them since they’d always be his natural default state.

Then again I never really understood how the Twins were special outside their affinity for Martian tech since it’s been stated their powers are just average. Or how Walky was supposedly the more dangerous of the two.

[SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER]
Because he was purposely holding himself back because when you succeed and overachieve people depend on you and he didn’t like being stuck with the responsibility
[SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER]

SEMY? I wonder if the writers of “Skin Horse” read “It’s Walky!” back before that was changed- they have a character called UNITY. A dedicated puzzle-solving AI crashed while trying to figure out what the “Y” stood for.

Okay, so I’ve never thought about it too hard, but… Did Sal know she was adopted? I mean, it’s perfectly reasonable for Beef to never figure it out – it’s not unheard of for a mixed race kid to end up looking white. But the Walters were super white. I mean, Sal had to seriously be wondering what was up.

“Likes to stare at Joyce in her sleep” and I immediately think of Shinji, ha. I still remember a poster with Walky, Joyce, and Rei all done up as those characters. Both were important in my life at the time, well at least the second half of Its Walky was some of the arc’s that happened after the underwater part got me right in the feels. Not sure if that’s a saying but I’m making it so.

I hate these pages. The art is great (not as good as your current work, but much better than the early “It’s Walky!”), but it’s a really clunky way of introducing the concept. I mean… yeah. This kind of exposition-heavy introduction is almost impossible to do well.

When I voted for the re-drawn strips, I thought we’d be diving right in with the stuff you previewed, not halting the narrative in its tracks for this.

SEMME had already been teased in “Roomies!” after all, and while I know from the commentary that you wrote these pages for a stand-alone book, I think diving right in would’ve been the better choice anyway. Leave these to the extras along with the original IW! strips and keep the plot going. Too late now, but it’s just frustrating finally getting to IW! and having the wheels start spinning in place instead of continuing toward the good stuff.

She never actually went up against Beef. She smacked around his two nameless buddies, and Beef booked it along with them without actually engaging in fisticuffs. And Beef wasn’t even involved in the second encounter; his only appearance at the party was hanging with Roz.

Yeah, as timemonkey says above, we saw her doing it. But, like I said, Beef wasn’t even involved in that second encounter. As you can see in the next strip, he was hanging with Roz while Amazi-Girl was kicking the others’ asses.

“We learn important things presented to us in Roomies! that we’d need to know going into It’s Walky! – Beef is Walky’s twin brother.”

Was it actually mentioned in Roomies!? I skimmed the strips with Walky and didn’t find it. And since I don’t think Beef was referred to as Walkerton at any point, how were we supposed to know that they’re brothers?

Now that you mention it, I went and skimmed the pages tagged for Steve Walkerton, David Walkerton, and Professor Doc. The closest thing to any mention of a relationship between Steve and David (Beef and Walky), far as I’ve seen, is the two silhouettes standing side-by-side in the background of Jason’s “I’m involved now” page. Never even noticed that until searching by the tags. I might’ve missed something, though.

Well, Joyce’s insane old crush on Danny defines her for a portion of IW!, and Sal’s “relationship” with Danny defines HER for MOST of IW!, and these two tidbits provide context for a big character development event for them both.

But don’t we flashback to Sal’s relationship with Danny DURING It’s Walky? So Roomies not needed there. And Joyce was mindwiped and barely reacts when she runs into Danny again so again, not necessary.

The whole reason for the Sal/Joyce confrontation in Roomies was to make a whole bunch of parallels for the Sal/Joyce confrontation in It’s Walky when the Aliens go public. It’s why they’re called, respectively, Round 1 and Round 2. I remember reading the archive the first time and not knowing WHY the second one was called Round 2, and indeed feeling like I was missing some context, since Round 1 was comic-books-only at that time.

WHY “SEMME”?? I mean, not only I can’t sort down what it means, but it looks like both “seme”, japanese for attackant in, for exemple, a basketball game, or to in gay intercourse AND “semen”, portuguese for “sperm”… Was it meant? Because I can’t look at that and not laugh…